When I was a lad in 1988, I recall reading a blurb about a Cory Snyder plate appearance against Roger Clemens. I don't recall where I read it--perhaps in the newspaper. It said that in a recent game, Snyder hit a routine fly ball out against Clemens but when he returned to the dugout, Snyder received high fives from his teammates. The reason? Snyder apparently had struck out in every career plate appearance against Clemens prior to the fly ball.

That's 9 strikeouts in the first 9 PAs until he finally hit that fly ball. Only 4 pitchers struck Snyder out more than Clemens, and they all had more PAs in which to do it. And while Clemens and Bert Blyleven both struck Snyder out 12 times, look at the difference in stats. Off Clemens, Snyder managed only 2 singles for a .087 SLG. Off Blyleven, Snyder hit 4 HR, 1 2B, 1 3B, and had 7 RBI and a .821 SLG. Geez.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 8:23 am and is filed under Pitcher vs. Batter.
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CLEVELAND - Forget the mop of Texas hair and the song of Texas drawl and replace them with black curls and a seductive coo; Roger Clemens is Lucy Van Pelt. Forget the blond locks and the home run swing and replace them with a single ringlet atop the dome and the unkindest cut of all; Cory Snyder is Charlie Brown. "Come on," Cy Young Lucy purrs from the mound. "Please. This time I promise. Really." "Good grief!" mustachioed Charlie replies from the bench. Yet he goes out there every time. It is not a football waiting to be kicked on a fall day. It is a baseball asking to be hit by the summertim...

dude, your blog just rocks. Posts like this. They are fantastic. I follow a ton of blogs and site, and honestly, this has to be one of the top ten blogs out there. I should make a top ten blog list and include yours in it.

Also, does anyone know if there is a player and pitcher match-up more one sided than Ray Durham vs. Mariano Rivera? Durham was 0-26 and was only able to get the ball out of the infield twice. He did manage to reach base once on an E3.http://www.bb-ref.com/pi/shareit/tedk

I just took five minutes (alright it was probably more like ten) to look around at a few high-strikeout pitchers and searched to see who they faced the most often with an OBP of .000 .
If PI could ever do a global search on these things, it would be a lot of fun.

Tomepp, I'm not aware of any studies on the likely outcomes of specific pitcher-batter matchups, or pitcher-types vs. batter-types. But intuitively it makes sense to me that you can't simply average out the strikeout percentages for the most likely outcome. The two probably work together exponentially in some way. A high-K pitcher vs. a high-K batter will probably usually result in a ton of K's.

Johnny, you're absolutely right - you can't just average strikeout rates. Many of Jay's 76% non-K plate appearances came against non-K pitchers (the Jeff Suppans), and likewise many of the 72% non-K plate appearances against Pedro were by disciplined hitters (the Nomar Garciaparras). I was totally wrong in implying that they should be averaged to determine the probable outcome. Still, I think 8 Ks in 8 PAs is an outlier in any case.